Technology in Today's Language.

Main menu

Post navigation

Relax It’s Only the FBI

RIOT—Relax, It’s Only Toastmasters—is a friendly tagline that Aref Dajani, a good friend of mine chose as a theme when he was a Toastmasters District 27 Governor. The theme went viral in the global Toastmasters community, and today there are members of Toastmasters International who quote that theme without knowing where it came from.

Today’s RIOT is a creature of a completely different kind. It represents a potential threat to levels of privacy that some of us have come to expect in social media. In short, Raytheon’s Riot (short for Rapid Information Overlay Technology) appears to have been an outcome of a Request For Information from the FBI. The RFI for a Social Media Application specifically stated an interest in an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI/SIOC. [Strategic Information and Operations Center]. It also indicated an interest in “Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc. ” In a word, the FBI was looking for an application to spy on whoever posted in social media and on whatever broadcast the FBI considers to be of interest.

The last update to the RFI was a March 5, 2012 AMENDMENT #5 RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS.Question 12 was disturbing, to say the least. The question was The sheer volume of Twitter posts alone will be roughly 73B annually, which will become a significantly large number for archival and search in a short period of time. How many years will the government want to store prior social media inputs before they begin to purge data (or will they purge data)?The FBI’s response?The FBI is unable to answer this question at this time. More research is needed on the FBI’s side to determine the space needed. Please submit your capabilities and any suggested capabilities you believe meet the FBI’s needs. In other words, Tweet away…we’re keeping yours for an indeterminate period—especially if we regard your Tweet as a threat. Somewhere along the line a simple request for information turned into a contract, and Raytheon produced its proof of concept (and product) for the FBI. The video demonstation of the ease with which RIOT can scoop up, package and draw conclusions from discrete pieces of data you and I have posted left me wondering who the next customer will be. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.